Taking Stock by C J West Page A

catastrophic. The isolation of a traveling project team worked wonders for productivity, since there wasn’t much else to do alone in a strange city. Playing with company men was a hazard she was warned about early on, but it became a bit too convenient. One short-lived road romance led to numerous invitations for more, some legitimate and some that begged the utmost discretion.
    Here, on her first day, she’d already met a man who could make her break that promise. Gregg Turner was different. He had a solid hunky physique like many of the consultants she worked alongside, but Gregg’s job demanded compassion. He solved customer problems and coached fresh college graduates through their first professional years. He was part babysitter, part kindergarten teacher, part mountain man. They shook hands outside the cubicle of a customer service person, a kid with a headset who looked nineteen. He and Stan both admired Gregg reverently.
    Sarah wanted to learn more.
    The intersection of their work lay in a file drawer of customer complaints. Stan admitted he hadn’t researched anything in that drawer in the eight years he’d been at BFS. It was tricky business. Angry customers had to be called and Stan had little taste for that. Surely some of the complaints were founded and she wondered what had been done with those. An investigation would get her closer to Gregg and possibly win her favor with Herman. Glad for the help, Gregg made a copy of the latest complaint letter. The drawer held hundreds more that had been researched and responded to. This one drawer held more promise than anything in Herman’s plan about human resources and accounts payable and there was enough work to keep her within sight of Gregg for the next three months.

Chapter Twelve
     
    Brad grunted as he locked out two forty-five . He let out a whoosh and eased it down for another rep. The dweeby guy in the corner with the pot belly and receding hairline was struggling with a lat pull-down of forty-five pounds. He was as much a total joke as his trainer was smoking hot. Five-ten with long legs and an ass only a teenager or an aerobics instructor could maintain. The whole package was wrapped so tight in spandex she’d hold Brad’s attention over anything else that walked in. She urged the middle-aged guy on as if managing forty-five pounds was some sort of accomplishment. The real accomplishment was paying attention to this guy long enough to earn her fee.
    In the other corner a muscle-head was curling sixty-five pounds with one hand, as intent on the bicep in the mirror as he was on curling the weight. Footsteps droned on a treadmill in the next room broken by a CNN newscast that had repeated the same stories for about the fifth time since Brad arrived. He pressed the weight up and rested it on the holder, his eyes locked on the spandex-clad buns in the mirror.
    A figure in sharply-creased blue pants blocked his line of sight.
    “Impressive. That’s gotta be over two hundred.”
    “Yeah. Two forty-five .” Brad sat up and faced Ray from accounting, a pretty solid guy, but dry and more than a little uptight.
    “Amazing what you can do when you’re down here all day.”
    “Hey, the clock never stops in IT.”
    “Apparently there’s a substantial pause between twelve and two.”
    Brad grabbed a worn white hand towel and dabbed his face to hide a chuckle. He sprayed a fine mist from the water bottle and wiped off the bench as if that might remove twenty minutes of heavy sweat from the black cushion. “Say what you want, but when you bean counters run home for dinner we’re just getting going.”
    Brad slid off the weights one by one and replaced them on their holders. Ray watched. “What’s the good word upstairs ? You guys still hacking my budget ? ”
    Ray’s face tensed. Why did mention of the budget process make him nervous ? He was the one who spent his time uncovering the boondoggles and trying to kill everyone’s pet projects. “Computers